My mutterings on life, thoughts and actions.

HIV

Quangos are evil, they are a ridiculous drain on Tax Payers money and not needed. Or that is what the Tory/Lib Government would have us believe. And the term Quango sounds a bit silly too, so maybe they are right. This leads to the question, well what is a Quango and why do we have them int he first place.

A QUANGO is short for “quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation“ and generally is an organisationt hat the Government has devolved responsibility to. So a bit similar to Local Government in that respect, in that it makes decisions for specific areas of interest. When put like that, it doesn’t sound too silly after all. Especially when the Government is talking about making government footprint smaller.

Its easy to point both barrels at the general term of Quango and shoot it down, but it is a general term and a classification of an organisaion. No organisation has the term QUANGO in its title (if there is one, please point it out). What this does is obscure just what cuts are coming. Reports today show a list of what is under threat and I think this really starts to put into perspective what we are about to lose, things like (there are 177, this is my selection):

My issue is that these organisations have been doing work to date and were set up with some form of mandate, the question is what or who is going to take on that mandate? I would bet that efficiencies can be made int he way they are ran, but what happens if they cut an organisation with no plan for how that function will be carried out. Does that then get taken on by the Government again? Who will look after the British Waterways, the UK Film industry, our WEEE and ROHS obligations.

This is where oversimplification and the cut and run approach will severely damage UK PLC in the long term. Or we get the direct opposite of what we are being promised and that is LARGER government because no-one can fill the vacuum created by the dissolution of these organisations.